Albrecht Dürer

Born the third son of a Hungarian Goldsmith, Albrecht Dürer (1471- 1528) had begun painting by the time he was thirteen. At fifteen he left his father’s employ and was apprenticed to the painter and printmaker Michael Wolgumut where he began to work with woodcuts and copper engravings as well. He traveled to the Netherlands and often to Italy where he studied Italian Renaissance painters. By 1512 he had become portraitist to the rich and famous of his time, including prominent mer￾chants, clergy, government officials, and Emperor Maximilian I and King Christian II of Denmark. “The Fall of Man,” the 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve which ap￾pears on our cover, was an early product of his Italian studies and sought to express his new ideas of beauty and harmony. It combines the ideals of the south within the Gothic traditions of the North.